Germany arrests anti-Islam Saudi in SUV attack

What happened

German authorities arrested a Saudi psychologist and anti-Islam activist over the weekend, accusing him of a Friday night SUV attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg that left five people dead and more than 200 wounded, 41 of them seriously. Officials acknowledged Sunday they had received warnings from Saudi Arabia about the suspect, identified as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, and said they were trying to establish a motive for the attack.

Who said what

The alleged attacker, who drove a rental car into a crowd of Christmas shoppers, "does not fit any existing mold," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said Sunday. The "perpetrator" acted "like an Islamist terrorist, although he was clearly ideologically hostile to Islam."

Abdulmohsen, a resident of Germany since 2006, had expressed support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and for Elon Musk. Peter Neumann, a German terrorism expert and a professor of security studies at King's College London, said on X that "a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance toward Islamists" is an unusual profile.

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What next?

The "horror triggered by yet another act of mass violence in Germany makes it likely that migration will remain a key issue" in Feb. 23 federal elections, where the AfD is polling in second place after the conservative Christian Democrats, The Associated Press said.